Anime, games, and anime games

Completed Series

Let me first apologize for the extreme lateness of this post, because I decided to allocate all my blog-writing time to drafting my season preview, a process which requires through and rigourous research, along with some complicated IRL stuff (not the bad kind of IRL stuff, so no worries mates). Anyway, let’s move on to the JoJo episodes, shall we?

You though it was going to be Star Platinum in the opening, but it was me, ZA WARUDO!

REALLY GUYS REALLY DIO LIKE CAME OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OPENING AND HE PUNCHED THE SCREEN AND THEN HE WENT MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA AND JOTARO WAS LIKE ORAORAORAORAORAORAORA AND IT WAS SO FUCKING COOL AND DAVID PRO IS SO BASED BECAUSE IT WAS CLEAR THAT THEY PLANNED THIS SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE EGYPT ARC GOD THIS WAS SO FUCKING AWESOME

With all these new anime coming and going, this show has been constantly on my mind ever since then. Despite only ranking #2 in its seasonal roundup, it’s definitely the one to have a really lasting impression on me with its writing, execution, its everything. Probably, it’s proof that I can be rather short-term with my seasonal roundups, but that’s not the topic of discussion at hand. The thing is, I haven’t paid this anime the honor it deserves, and to that purpose I will now review it to explain why it’s so fucking awesome.

Last week, we left JoJo on the cliffhanger of whether Noriaki Kakyoin, reroreroer extraordinaire, was a bad enough dude to defeat DIO. And this week, we open on Kakyoin swinging across Cairo like Japanese Spider-Man. Is he, indeed, a bad enough motherfucker (figuratively and literally) to at least put up a fight? Well…

The best part in the entire episode was DIO casually strolling through the streets of Egypt and nobody gives a fuck about it. I don’t know what Egyptians talk about that is so much more interesting than a seven foot tall blonde vampire wearing a cape and a belt with a heart-shaped buckle and kneepads.

And so, we finally reach DIO’s World, the most iconic fight in the series. Despite it initially being a mystery what is The World’s power, we all probably know what it does unless you’ve been living under a rock since 1999. And if you don’t know, don’t worry, I won’t say what it is until the show says what it is. That said, DIO’s power is definitely less esoteric than that of Kars or the final boss Stands in later parts.

And so, the Vanilla Ice battle draws to an end, and the end is definitely better than the battle itself and not because the battle ended (heh). That said, despite this battle not being as much fun as D’Arby the Gamer’s, it does contain several character’s finest moments. And the conclusion is pretty epic too, even if the result isn’t greater than the sum of its parts.

A lot of shit went down in these two episodes so I’ll first start by talking about the rest of D’Arby the Gamer’s fight because it’s by far the least brutal thing that went down in these two episodes. Mind you, this is the fight that included that creepy-ass Kakyoin doll without a rerorerorero button, so of course the rest will be fucking brutal. And, believe it or not, this and D’Arby the Gambler’s fight are indeed Jotaro’s finest moments.

I’ve said this before, but I am not a big fan of Stardust Crusaders. This is something of a stereotypical Western JoJo fanboy opinion, I know, as pretty much everybody outside of glorious Nippon prefers Joseph over Jotaro. But I must admit, that there’s a certain point where Stardust Crusaders picks up and the monster-of-the-week battles begin to become much more interesting. It was never, contrary to popular opinion, just “Star Platinum punching things” as much as it was “JoJo trying to figure out how to and where to make Star Platinum punch”.